Beads of Truth, Summer 1985 #15
by Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji

February 19, 1985 Excerpted from a talk in Los Angeles

In childhood you were never taught responsibility. You have been shoved and pushed. The majority of child raising I have seen in this coun­try is very regimental. Nobody uses the heart; it is all a head thing. This kind of childhood is very painful. If I would have been raised as we raise children here, I would have commit­ted suicide at the age of two. True! The way you address your children is so rude, so inhuman, so neurotic! You are so discourteous when speaking to your children. In spite of that fact that you think you are very loving parents. You never say to a child, "Please:' You never call a child by his full name. You never treat him like a person, or her like a person. You just treat them like puppies and you expect them to learn how to live. Impossible.

I remember when I was almost three or four years old, how I was ad­dressed. My full name was always called. My mother never ever called me by a nickname. Never.

I still remember my mother would call, "Harbhajan Singh ji, this is the time for you to come and join us at breakfast." Or she would call me by my full name and say, "I have prepared the food you love very much. It is there. Let us go and sit down and eat. I'd like to feed you." There was a great respectability and re­sponsibility. The greatest thing I was taught was that I have a complete, full, isolated, but sovereign identity. Your sovereignty can only be given to you as a child by your mother, by her identifying you as a complete, total individual. What you call 'grit,' the strength of the identity, is given to you by the father. It is all done in the first eleven years. Afterwards anything done or said and taught by the parent is useless, because the base is already built.

The sweetness of giving a child an identity is very difficult for you. You think the child is a piece of furni­ture, your property that you have absolute control over. Is there any parent who can just feel that their own child is a complete, indepen­dent, sovereign person within the family? Not at all. The maximum you give him is that he's a night's guest or a visitor or a dependent. If you are affectionate, you are very loving. If you are mad, you are very obnoxious.

Do you bring things to trial? If a child has done wrong, have you given him a chance to defend him­self? If a child has done wrong, totally wrong ... bring him to trial. In my life I remember, I used to sometimes do things intentionally wrong. I would intentionally get mad sometimes and do something really weird. Then the notice was served. "Okay, tomorrow at 11:00, what you have done today will be considered. Prepare yourself." So I'd ask my gov­erness, "Well, I did it. Now how to get out of it?" And she'd say, "Well, Baba, I have told you many times but you always put me on the spot with these troubles. My job is at stake, you fully understand. I'm a very good woman. I'm alway with you but why do you do these things? Now we have to go to grandpa and plead mercy. There is nothing we can do. The facts are against us." I would say, "Well, what are the facts? Tell me the facts." And she would say, "Well, this was expected of you and this was the situation and this is what you did wrong. What am I going to do?" So in that very affectionate situation I would look at her and she'd say, "Well, there's a way out. We'll ask for a postponement."